Check it, this French guy has built a replica of the entire city of Paris in his backyard out of, you guessed it, trash!

Note: The caption says he’s been working on this project for 15 years and is only 29.  Talk about life’s work.  Perhaps I can track him down for a Q&A on lifelong obsessions!

Via Boing Boing!  (Thanks for the tip, Brendan)

The AP ran a great feature today on the Indonesian company, Plastic Works, which buys plastic trash from trash pickers and employs locals to make it into bags and other brightly colored goods to sell.  Remember those cute Jakarta umbrellas from Monsoon Vermont?

Berlusconi claims he’ll be stepping in the end the Naples trash crisis.  While that would be nice to believe, Sivlio doesn’t have the best rep for doing what’s best for Italians.

Photo via UPI

Climbers left 120 tons of trash on the China face of Everest last year.   That side will be closed for trash pick up for the time being.  On the other side, Nepal charges big fines to those who don’t come down the mountain with all the equipment they took up. I wonder how all of this fits into China-Tibet politics.

Photo from Alamy via The Independent.

From the Bluestockings site:

Wednesday, July 2nd @ 7PM - Free
Reading: Kellogg & Pettigrew “Toolbox for Sustainable City Living”
Please join co-founders of the Rhizome Collective for a reading from their book “Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide,” and in a discussion of the design of autonomous urban communities utilizing simple techniques such as rainwater harvesting, bioremediation, and worm composting.

Photo of the Rhizome entrance from the Collective’s Web site.

This week in trash news:

• Sophia Loren pleas for Naples to resolve the trash conflict;
• Pixar’s “Wall-E,” features a trash-compacting robot in love and generates lots of buzz;
• Closing of landfills leads to longer trash hauls in the U.S.;
• Popular Science muses on trash robots in space; and
• Whitehaven, England, imposes steep fines for not sorting trash.

Pixar still via the LATimes

At the Nairobi Giraffe Center, it isn’t just the endangered Rothschild Giraffes that get fed, a healthy population of wort hogs lives on the reserve.  It’s a bit far from the National Park, but after catching wind of the free food scheme, the wort hogs have taken up permanent residence.  No food waste at the Center!

It doesn’t take a tall fence to keep giraffes in, their knees prevent them from being able to step OVER anything.

Among the fun facts I picked up on this only tangentially trash-related afternoon: giraffes sleep only half an hour a day, standing up with their eyes open.

Wort hogs and giraffes hang out in the real world, as well.  Giraffes have great eyesight and can see danger coming.  Wort hogs can’t see anything if its not right in front of their faces, but can smell trouble coming that giraffes might not see.  A happy pairing.

Next week, back to the wonkier side of trash.

Ugh.  I took some hilarious photos of wort hogs eating up fallen food pellets at the Nairobi Giraffe Center.  Sadly, I don’t have the connection speed to upload them here.  Sorry, trashies, I’ll be home this weekend and promise to make up for lost time garblogging.

  A promising sight upon entering a supermarket this afternoon: lots of reusable bags.  At the checkout counter there was an even larger display.  Often when travelling I get all peeved and self-righteous about diesal fumes and the lack of recycling.  It’s great to see a model example from Africa. 

  The trash-related news is grim today.  In Guatemala, a landslide at a dump killed four trash pickers.  For more about the lives of these people, check out the inspirational documentary Recycled Lives.